This Post Calls Someone a Heretic!

I have discussed this before, but it never really donned on me to cast it in this incendiary way.

In the following imaginary yet familiar debate:

Non-Christian: Homosexuals are born that way.

Christian: No they aren’t.

What do you call the Christian? Well, in a certain way you call him a heretic. For his premise in holding fast to the position that homosexuals are not born that way is not just semi but full Pelagian. The heretic Pelagius, in arguing with the first half of Augustine’s prayer:

Grant what You command, and command what You desire.

held that God would never give the moral responsibility without the moral ability to comply. According to Pelagius, it was absurd that God would have to "grant" that which He commanded. Augustine argued that the moral responsibility remained after the fall, even though the result of the fall was an inherited moral inability. In other words:

Pelagius: God would not punish us for how we are born.

Augustine: Yes he would, which is why grace is required.

Am I wrong in seeing a perfect mapping?

Everything I know about Augustine and Pelagius tells me that in the little debate above over homosexuality, Augustine would agree with the non-Christian and Pelagius with the Christian.